Discussion Forum: Living with a Brain Chip
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The next generation of cranial chip implants enables data transmission directly to the brain during rest without interfering with sleep. This data feed feature dramatically decreases the amount of time needed to assimilate new data each day, in fact the chipped person will just wake up knowing what was streamed into their head the previous night. The presence of the chip interferes with REM sleep, but the new data feed does not actually disrupt or alter in any way the sleep of the person with the implant.
The new disruptor cage is constructed out of more advanced materials that are lighter and more comfortable for the wearer. No longer is it necessary to lock head, neck and torso in to a rigid structure, the new generation of disruptor cages need only to lock to the head and upper vertebrae of the neck. This new format still provides the same protection against magnetic damage to the brain, advances in real time processing now allow for emergency shut off if the magnetic pulses are not directed exactly at the chip. The use of rare earth magnets in a wider net around the cranium makes for a more thorough disruption of the chip (even while undergoing data feed). This improves sleep by removing annoying dream sequences, restlessness, or need for sedatives previously common in past cranial chip implants.
These advances in cranial chip disruptors will work with all cranial chips. However, those with the newer (Gen. 3.4 or higher) cranial chips will see the most improvements and those who receive the soon to be released Gen. 4.0 will be able to take advantage of many new options. The 4.0 chips, like those before it, are a sandwich of carbon nanotubes, and gate molecules that are covered in neural growth promoters. The 4.0 chip features advances in neuron-to-chip interface, allowing for more neurons to contact the chip in more functional ways. This in turn increases the rate of information in and out of the chip, further increasing cognitive ability.
With this increase in connectivity of brain to chip and chip to brain comes increased assimilation and learning time. After implantation (still an outpatient procedure) it will take 30 to 90 days of neuron growth around the chip for it and the brain to become fully integrated. Upon chip integration, the newly chipped person will need to attend nine months of intensive classroom based courses, where they are taught new ways to think, process thoughts, and to categorize memories and data.
It is during this time, as the chip becomes enabled, that they will begin to feel the effects of the continuously running chip. As the brain becomes dependant on the chip the implantee will find it difficult to sleep. The first effects will be tossing and turning at night, followed by repetitive dreams, and finally inability to sleep. It is at this point that the cranial chip disruptor is needed and technicians will work with the chip implanted person (and spouse if necessary) insuring proper technique in fitting the disruptor, allowing the user to have the best nights sleep ever.
Posted Tuesday, 06/17/2008, 11:25am AZ To begin with, I am impressed with the Center’s presentation of the scenario, in that the mere functional nature of these possible technologies is presented to the audience; and not, as might otherwise be the case, the possible misuses of such technologies.
Although, possibly, a large percentage of the American public would not be opposed to receiving information in this manner, or increasing one’s mental capacity, the natural progression of this technology might lead in directions to which people have moral objections.
Essentially, this technology begins to break the plane between what is human and what is mechanical. Should we be gradually building ourselves into cyborgs? My inclination is that most people would object to the full integration of human machinery and technological machinery; however, it remains unclear at precisely what point altering human functions becomes morally unacceptable.
Additionally, there is the concern that those constructing and designing these chips could tailor-make them to implant specific thoughts or opinions into individual’s minds. This, of course, would be one of the first tepid steps toward mind control. And, it goes without saying that most individuals would oppose any such direct incursion into their sense of free will.
Full discussion: http://nano-ology.blogspot.com/
Posted Sunday, 06/08/2008, 12:06am AZ My name is Daniel,
I have several Nano Chips in my brain. The chip allow my eyes to become lens and I am filming a documentary former vice president Al Gore on social, economical, religious, counter -terrism, computer chip, bio chip, nano chip and specifically BIO ETHIC STANDARDS and I am shootinh the documentary through through Nano lenses in my eyes and this documentary will be released next year. I am a time traveler, a class 20 Jumper. I also have a movie coming out that I am staring in, a martial arts film , and interactive video game called the " The Messenger" coming to theaters late January 2009 on MGM films and produced by none other that Mr. Quinton Terrentino.
I would like to discuss this experience with others. Wether you are an engineer, or you have nano brain chips as well...
I welcome your questions, experiences, and comments.
My email is dannycrazydj@yahoo.com
Posted Saturday, 05/17/2008, 7:21am AZ This comment applies to the interactions among multiple scenarios. Convergent technologies to enhance human performance will combine into a system, either well or poorly. So a future generation might have the option of combining bionic eyes, enhanced tissue-engineered organisms, neural implants, novel pharmaceuticals, clothing with embedded smart sensors, genetic enhancements &c.
How will we monitor the interaction among these technologies, as they develop?
One problem is that these technologies will probably be very expensive, and hence will reinforce the Matthew Effect--the rich will not just be richer, they will almost be a different species from the poor!
MIchael E. Gorman
University of Virginia
Posted Saturday, 05/17/2008, 6:18am AZ quite not possible because we have not yet mastered the art of creating interfaces with nature. but there is hope if we master the machines in mathematics and the mathematics of nature's machines.
Posted Monday, 05/12/2008, 2:43pm AZ Dr Shanmugam - While I agree that at the individual's point of view, the benefits from a potential nanotech 'fix' are certainly worth it. Being pessimistic, however, I have to wonder at what cost such fixes might impose on them - or on others.
For instance, a cure for a disease or other problem that is only available for some small percentage of the affected population is probably a very good way to make a whole lot of money. Similarly, a capability that enhances humans significantly (such as the brain chip mentioned here) that is also only available to a small (read 'rich') proportion of the populace would tend to exacerbate the gap between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots', quite possibly with strong negative affects on society.
Posted Sunday, 05/11/2008, 4:31pm AZ A general comment which relates to all of the scenes is that these are primarily focussed on the positive advances that these new technologies may present. Negative impacts have largely been ignored (acknowledging however that the project is providing a mechanism for such feedback to be made - via this RANT). To balance this, a suggested approach is the development of dark scenarios - a good example is the SWAMI project on ambient intelligence scenarios - see link below: http://www.isi.fraunhofer.de/t/projekte/e-fri-swami.htm
Posted Sunday, 05/11/2008, 12:52am AZ The brain is a complicated organ and its basic working rule is stimulation or positive reflex and inhibition or negative reflex.The idea of brain chip for diseases are ok.For example in an Autistic child the problem of communication if overcome by using a brain chip is a good proposition.The same way for so many diseases like 1.Parkinson's disease,2.Mental retardation,3.epilepsy,4.cerebral palsy,5.Deaf and dumb 6.blindness 7.post stroke scenario and the like.I can write a detailed report on this by which way chips should be build up to improve the patient's condition.Even suppression of excitatory reflex will help to treat alcoholic addiction.This nano future is good for these purposes.
Dr.S.Shanmugam,M.D.Physician and Nanomedicine Researcher,Tirunelveli,India.
Posted Saturday, 05/10/2008, 4:33pm AZ As the person whose response was responded to (who thinks maybe there ought to be handles here), I think I was misunderstood.
I didn't throw in random details that might or might not actually "come true". I said things I think apply almost universally in scenarios where you're likely to get the "brain chip" at all. What I'm objecting to is the sort of very contingent and speculative details... like how you might mitigate an already conjectural REM sleep disruption, or which of many possible mechanisms might have been chosen to power the thing.
Contrast that with my statements that bugs were going to be a big problem, and that controlling what you loaded would be a big issue. I think those are pretty clearly universal.
In the same way, I think my comment about AI was misunderstood. I wasn't saying that this thing was on a separate developmental track from AI, and that AI would come along first just because AI was moving faster. What I was trying to say was that AI, or at least stuff that could be applied to build AI, was a prerequisite for this brain chip. We may not get AI very soon if ever, but we're not going to get the described sort of ability to manipulate people's minds unless we ALSO have AI... both because that sort of knowledge of how the brain works would naturally enable you to build AI, and because you'd probably need AI to build that kind of integrated knowledge out of the data you'd be working with. My claim is about the likely coupling between the two, not about the absolute probability of either.
Posted Saturday, 05/10/2008, 11:10am AZ As the person who asked for more detail, I find it amusing that the person who held me to task for doing so went on to add quite a bit of detail to the discussion. Thank you for proving the point, whoever you are.
I 'threw in' the two negative scenarios as they are the first ones that came to my mind. I would suggest that this scenario seems to indicate a period of iterative development ('Gen 3.4 or higher') leading to better/alternative capabilities and debugging steps. Additionally it seems to me that the REM sleep issue is hinted at in the text.
Also as a computer security professional, I would agree that security of encryption is not sufficient to lead to trust of the system. "Garbage in, garbage out" is the phrase the other commenter may have been looking for - if the data production process can be tainted, all encryption means is that there can be no remediation/prevention of tainted data can occur in the transportation to the brain chip.
I refrain from extending this comment beyond the brain chip itself into such areas as AI's likelihood.
Posted Friday, 05/09/2008, 1:52pm AZ I disagree with the person who asked for more detail, because the more detail you add, the less likely it is that what you come up with will bear any resemblance to anything realistic. It seems you just threw in the sleep loss thing and the "chip disruptor" hack because you needed a drawback with some somewhat-inconvenient remediation... why not just say that there are drawbacks and remediation is inconvenient? You need detailed information to make a personal decision about installation, but not necessarily to talk about the scenario in general terms.
I doubt you'll get a chip that can just load knowledge into somebody's brain from an outside source before you've also got strong, self-improving non-human AI, which will change the whole game so much that this scenario probably isn't worth thinking about much.
If you did get this in a recognizable world, I'd be really worried about bugs and security. Getting nailed by a subtle bug would not be nice. Having somebody reprogram your brain from outside, or read out its contents, does not sound desirable... and I suspect that Big Brother would eventually ask for a read mode, which probably wouldn't be too hard to provide if you could already do the write mode.
Computer security is a specialty of mine, and "quantum encryption" (or any other kind of encryption) doesn't solve the untrustworthy data problem. The issue isn't the security of the cryptography; it's the security of the process by which you choose which data to load and which sources of data to trust. Cryptography is trivially easy compared to figuring out the trust problem, and nobody has a convincing approach.
That said, it would be nifty to have, assuming minimal side effects. I really don't think I care if spelling bees lose their meaning because of it. I wouldn't worry about DRM, because I wouldn't load any DRMed material, period.
... but I wouldn't be the first person to do it either...
Posted Friday, 05/09/2008, 1:16pm AZ Instead of an opinion, let me offer a range of possibilities. Let us assume a “future-worlds” scenario process* has centered on the questions “Is this technology expensive?” and “Is it (or nanotech as a whole) acceptable to the public?”
When nano is expensive and unpopular, only the rich can afford the benefits, and they have to hide them. (I call this the “Super Villain” world.) What happens then?
If nano is cheap and acceptable, we get the “Cyborgs R Us” world.
Names and consequences for the other two worlds are left as an exercise for the student.
* (see http://www.wired.com/wired/scenarios/build.html for a description of these scenarios)
Posted Friday, 05/09/2008, 7:38am AZ This is a very cool idea. I just do not like the idea of having something unnatural in my brain. And I don't care how much security it has, someone would find a way around it. It just does not sound very safe.
Posted Friday, 05/09/2008, 5:58am AZ Your 'professional affiliation' choices are quite interesting - Rather than use any of the more common lists, you have made up your own. This lends some interesting insight into your perspective on who may or may not be interested in such technologies.
Regarding 'brain chips', you do not provide anywhere near enough information on the technology to make an informed decision. You intimate that there has been at least some history of improvement and social adoption of some number of prior versions. You do not go into side effects. You do not go into upgrade strategies. You do not go into cost, either initial, upgrade, or maintenance. You do not go into legal ramifications. You do not go into economic ramifications. You do not go into social ramifications.
Examples: Can someone with a 'brain chip' take part in a spelling bee? Why or why not?
Can someone with a brain chip walk safely through airport security, or whatever other strong EM fields you care to postulate? How well do they stand up to MRI - what kind of risk of damage?
What are the publically reported benefits and negatives, what are the early adopters' experiences (beneficial and negative), and what are the researchers' expected benefits and negatives? (Note that these do NOT have to equate!)
How's this thing powered? How long's the power source good for? How do you recharge/replace the power source?
Prior research seems to indicate the lack of REM sleep to be detrimental to humans. How is this mitigated/mediated/prevented with a BrainChip?
Given the demonstrations of hacking pacemakers, what security protects the brainchip from malicious use?
Given DRM, what are the built-in 'intellectual property safeguards' or 'crippleware' (depending on one's point of view) built into such a device?
In short - I would not adopt such a device without a *lot* more data. Let the early adopters carry the risk - they're willing to pay the premium to do so.
Note also that this (as with all your scenarios) is *very* mild compared to others' predictions. I can only assume this is deliberate. I will not speculate as to why you're trying to focus on such relatively benign capabilities.
Posted Thursday, 05/08/2008, 3:20pm AZ Once a model has secure quantum encryption, I am all for it.
Posted Wednesday, 05/07/2008, 10:39am AZ Are we supposed to understand the concept of the "disruptor cage," or is it intentionally something mysterious? It sounds possible that the chip is assumed to be less capable than current wireless technology to the extent that it cannot simply be turned off but needs the "cage" to stop the feed. I presume this represents some effort present a "downside" for this technology--which may indicate the scenario builders have not really thought very deeply about the lived consequences of this technology.
CTR
Posted Monday, 05/05/2008, 12:07pm AZ Just do it... make it happen!